Day 9 (August 16th) My last full day in Istanbul.

[parasitegirl]

August 16^th, My last full day in Istanbul , my last lesson with Ahmet, and seeing Sema again.

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I’d been saving the Blue Mosque for last...mosques in general for last..tthey’re free, you know.

 

I set my alarm for 5:30, knowing that Mosques are open at all hours (although they will bar tourists during prayer time). I awoke at 5:30 and cursed my foolishness. I reset my alarm for a reasonable time.

 

After breakfast I headed to the Blue Mosque. I was walked there, and entertained while in line, by a Turkish man named Sirkan. He started the conversation, as I walked by, by telling me he liked my shoes and wanted to know where they were from..

 

This was absurd. I have many great shoes, but my very brown Sketchers are not great. They are great to wear while traveling, but they are not conversation fodder. Still, I was in a good mood and allowed for my conversation by replying that they were from Japan.

 

Like Kasper Gutman, I’ll tell you right out, I am a man who likes talk to a man who likes to talk.

 

…Except I’m not a man.

 

I was up front about not having any money to spend on anything and plans in the evening, and an airplane waiting for me the next afternoon…but Sirhan enjoyed my company and walked and talked with me. I explained how it was I’d come to buy shoes in Japan.

 

“Here’s to plain speaking and clear understanding.”

 

 

He looked a lot like Yule Brenner in his role from The King and I. What’s not to like about that? I remember his name because when I mispronounced it the first time and corrected me

 

 “Sirkan, like Tarkan.”

 

He took me to the correct entrance for me (not the tour entrance) and we chatted. I admitted that I spent my money on costumes. He told me once he helped a visiting belly dancer try to find where to buy good costumes but all he could find was…Bella, and that was out of the girl’s price range. I told him it was Bella who broke me, but that if he had future belly dancers to play gallant escort to, he should look into Legend and Sim costumes as well.

 

I indicated that I had brought my head wrap and was modestly dressed, so I wouldn’t need to wrap myself in the blue cloths reserved for hussy tourists.

 

Pictures of the mosque are in my photo album. You already know the contempt I feel for tourists who enter mosques and throw off their headscarfs…

 

It’s pretty goddamned awesome. A lot of Istanbul is awesome.

 

I went out and walked through the Hippodrome to look at the Egytpian Obelisk, the broken entwined snakes and what is left of Column of Constantine Porphyrogenitus. While I was taking a picture of something another man, this one with his hands full of guide books to sell, came up to me.

 

He offered to take the picture so that I could be in it. I explained I don’t like having my picture taken and don’t need proof I was here. He asked me if it was my first day in Istanbul and I told him, alas, it was my last and I barely have enough Lira to eat off of for the next three meals, so I didn’t need the tour book and couldn’t buy the postcards he had. We also talked for a while. He told me to take a book of postcards, for free, for being nice, and to have a good trip home. I thanked him.

 

I walked a bit through the Bazzar near the Blue Mosque. By this point I’d gotten good about turning men and their wares down in a playful manner. I was the tourist. Their job is to sell. Even the men with no obvious job often has one (like taking you to restaurants where he gets a kickback, or hotels where he forgets his wallet and he gets kickbacks, or being a fulltime milker of sugarmommies) and it’s nothing personal. No need to get bent out of shape.

 

So, yes, I told men I could not possibly step into their shops and fall in love with their jewelry/carpets/bags/leather because I was broke and I didn’t want to be heartbroken as well. I brandished my watch, and announced, like the White Rabbit, that I was late-late-late for a very important date! When one called out asking if I could “please, be holding your horse” I pouted with regret that my horse had places to be.

 

I took the tram to Kabatas and the funicular to Taxsim…onward to my last chats with Gonul, my last lesson with Ahmet (until he comes to Osaka in March).

 

I flipped through CDs at the used CD store I had been emptying of bellydance and folk music (Mestipho’s I think it is called, in Istiklar). I ate a small lunch with the credit card. I walked through a protest I didn’t understand. This was also when I saw two lively Romani boys dancing from a small crowd accompanied by a third on drums and a girl holding the cashbox.. One had small zills on his fingers and did the pelvic ups I’ve so enjoyed on many a You Tube. When he dropped to his knees and started “wringing out his shirt” I was all giddy.

 

“I know this!” I wanted to tell people.

 

His friend went on to some wickedly good body-shimmies and layers, mocking oriental style nightclub dancers. Ta-da! When the girl they were with came aorudn to collect money, almost everyone scattered. I dropped in 5 lira. I was down to 25.

 

I headed back to my hotel, walking so I could enjoy everything. Across the bridge I walked on the lower level, looking at the restaurants. I got smacked on the head by a tackle caught by the breeze. This slowed my pace enough for a waiter to chat me up, and give me a card for the next time I was in country.

 

I pulled out the business card I had for the other branch of the “Zeynel Abidin Cumbus” store, to see if they had the zills I wanted in a medium size. I found the store but it was closed.

 

Back at the hotel I contacted Sema. I hadn’t gone out with her the night before because the girls from Japan were exhausted.

 

When I called she was on the beach with the girls. We agreed to meet at Beskitas. She wouldn’t be able to go out with me on my last night, because the girls were worn out from the sea, but she did want to see me before I left…and she wanted my help explaining a few things to the girls about how to stay while in Istanbul.

 

I took a tram. While waiting for the tram I chatted up a cute Japanese boy my age. We turned out to be taking the same flight home. I gave him my card, told him I’d see him the next day, and also told him that Japanese emails are ok for me, I can read.

 

At Kabatas I said goodbye to him and hopped on a bus.

 

It took a few phone calls to locate Sema. I’d gotten off at a Beskitas bus stop, but not same one as she was at…her was closer to the shore. Hers had the added bonus of having three bus stops and a ferry unloading.

 

I must have walked right by her. We were not far away but with the language issue it was getting frustrating.

 

“I AM HERE!”

“I no see you!”

“By the bus stop!”

“I am at bus stop!!”

 

Sema eventually just started screaming “OOOOOOKSHAAAANN!!! OOOOKSHAN!” as I ran around looking.

 

I found her and we embraced. She’d worn her hair down to help me spot her. When you get right down to it we’re both dark-haired short-people in a country full of dark haired people…we don’t stick out! Although Sema was pink from swimming on the beach with her girls.

 

She took me over to the two Japanese girls. One was dressed as I do for travel, comfortable medium length clothing, no make-up, hair pulled back. The other had somewhat minimal tourist-hippy-beach wear and fake eyelashes with rhinestones in them…what I would categorize as “Japanese bellydancer off duty going to support her friends as they perform” wear.

 

They were happy to announce that the toilet was FIXED!

Sema grabbed a café table and I helped the girls find a toilet. As the girls and I walked I asked them, confidentially, how it was going. I had worried about them.

 

They were doing well. The toilet was an issue for the first day, but it had been fixed. They were having fun. They admitted that it was hard to understand Sema, and that she could be mercurial (They used basic Japanese with me, not sure of my level. They didn’t say “mercurial” they said “Sometimes happy! Sometimes dancing! Sometimes zzzzzzzzzzz! Sometimes frustrated! Then happy again!”) but that they were liking her and she took them to many things.

 

Good. They were not regretting homestay.

 

I joined Sema at the table. She said they had already gotten lost a few times trying to find her house, and would I please tell them NOT to give her address out to strange boys in the neighborhood who might come a-knocking for them later. Sema also said they hadn’t brought enough money for all the things they wanted to do, and had at first been content to let Sema pay for cabs, food outside the house, transportation…but were starting to realize that she provides a good bargain and it might be good manners to offer to split extra costs.

 

The girls came back and we all talked in a few languages.

 

Sema asked me to translate some things about how to best find their ways home, what scams to watch out for, what boy behavior was not safe, why not to carry all your cash in yourself at all times (Sema had a Korean homestay girl get robbed while trying something on in a changing room while away from the house) and how the Sultanahmet area would change when ramedan started (Local families playing and enjoying music and socializing after sundown, generally safer.). Sema opined that she wouldn’t worry once Norah was here, because Norah knows Turkish and Japanese and knows Istanbul well enough to know what and how to best help keep these girls safe.

 

My faith in Sema renewed by talking to the girls and by watching how she took care of them. She was respectful in listening and catering to their wants, needs, and exhaustion levels (although sometimes with and eyeroll or two). She was taking them around, getting them food, cooking for them, doing lessons, trying to get them to a point where they could be a little more independent…She likes fussing over her girls, she takes that seriously. I regretted that I hadn’t come to the beach…. but I don’t think I’d understood the offer when given…I wouldn’t have been free…I would have burned to a pink crisp.

 

At this point Sema smiled and put her large purse on the table and smiled. She started mother birding me. She’d brought the dolma and those cheese thingies we’d made together in plastic baggies. She didn’t want me to leave without enjoying the fruits of our labors. She mother-birded me when waiters weren’t looking (to the embarrassment of the Japanese girls). She’d chirp “Okshan!” and as I turned to her she’d pop another edible into my mouth and giggle with delight.

 

As we talked, I was sorry that I wouldn’t have the chance to do a follow up lesson with her that trip. I was just feeling like I’d gotten a good handle on the strange friend-daughter-friend-mother relationship we’d fallen into and was comfortable with it and with being vocal about my own needs and desires while being respectful of hers.

 

She asked me if I still wanted to see belly dance. I admitted to going to two shows (and I lied about the prices but she still berated me for not asking her to call for me…I hand’t known) and we gossiped about who was good, bad, and overrated. She was sorry our schedules hadn’t worked out to allow her to take me to live music, or to one of her Romani friend’s houses for a small party, or to meet the band she works with…but she wanted to make sure she could do something for me…

 

She said she couldn’t come along, but she could get me a good deal at Istanbul In, because, heck, she’d taught most of the dancers who worked there… or any other nightclub in the city, so getting me the lowest price possible wasn’t an issue. She’d danced there, trained more of the dancers, and if that doesn’t get you a discount, what does?

 

(Side note: Anyone who feels like they didn’t try to bargain enough with Bella? Like I felt for a while? Princess and Sema both grumbled about how she wouldn’t give them discounts either…Bella doesn’t have to bargain to get out money. She knows we’re hooked.)

 

So she got me dinner and show, to be paid for with a credit card, for 35 Euro (it would have been 30 cash…but I didn’t have that cash!).

 

She also upbraided me for a bit about the fact that I am not teaching but (gesturing to the false eyelashed girl) someone with only two years experience is (and the girl made a nod the fact that, yeah, maybe she shouldn’t be teaching but she lives in an isolated area of Japan…soo…) The fact that I am not teaching was revealed when the Japanese girls asked if it would be possible to take a private lesson with me…maybe the following morning.

 

Teach, Okshan, teach.

 

Sema will be in Tokyo in October. As her faithful Okshan I will go to the workshop and the show. I’d do it for her anyway, because I’m back to feeling warmhearted about her, despite her quirks, foibles, and humanness…but on a political note I’ll also go because it can’t hurt my local standing. I am very happy with how things are blooming here, I am busy, but to move  from restaurants-restaurants-restaurants to a wider variety of shows requires my acceptance by folks who aren’t already my friends or in the same two studios’ social sphere. We all need more cross-pollination. I know I have to get back into actively seeing more of other studio’s shows.

 

I hugged Sema goodbye and meant it.

 

I headed out to see the show at Istanbul In, which I have already discussed. The ride back from that show was in the Mostly-Iranian-Party-Bus.

 

I slept well.